55+ Most Beautiful Winter Book Quotes

The words in these Winter book quotes sparkle like the freshest snow and will make you feel warm inside on even the darkest, coldest days of the year.

Short Quotes

“Nothing burns like the cold.” – George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.” – Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt, exhausted, and stayed.” – Emily Fridlund, History of Wolves

“My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.” – George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter’s night.” – Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

“That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.” – Ali Smith, Winter

“It’s so hard to think in winter. The world seems confined in the space of your heart; you can’t see beyond yourself.” – Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.” – A Moveable Feast

“Winter always came creeping up on you when you least expected it.” – Henning Mankell, When the Snow Fell

“It is always winter now.” – George R.R. Martin, Fire & Blood

“Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.” – L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

---

“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”
– Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o’clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.” – Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow” – T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

“Laura and Mary were allowed to take Ma’s thimble and make pretty patterns of circles in the frost on the glass. But they never spoiled the pictures that Jack Frost had made in the night.” – Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

“They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else–the cold, and where he’d go in it–was outside, for a while anyway.” – Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

---

---

---

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. […] His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” – James Joyce, Dubliners

“Thank goodness for the first snow, it was a reminder–no matter how old you became and how much you’d seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered.” – Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“Well, I know now. I / know a little more / how much a simple / thing like a / snowfall can mean / to a person” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The snow came up to the top of Georgie’s calves – she had to lift her feet high to make any progress. Her ears and eyelids were freezing… God, she’d never even been able to imagine this much cold before. How could people live someplace that so obviously didn’t want them?” – Rainbow Rowell, Landline

“Whose woods these are I think I know / His house is in the village though; / He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow.” – Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.” – Sara Raasch, Snow Like Ashes

“The snow was still everywhere. New snow was falling!” – Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day

“Snow swarmed like honeybees in the golden glow of the old-fashioned streetlamps; it slathered tree trunks and sparkled like crushed diamonds at his feet. He heard a whispering noise and saw two people glide from among the trees on cross-country skis. A lavender lunar radiance filled the park. It was a world from childhood: castles and forests and magic lamps and princes scaling walls of brambles.” – Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

“The blizzard, created when an enormous trough of cold air rushing in from the Arctic had met up with an equally enormous influx of warm, wet air from the gulf, gobbled up everything in its path. The collision generated a force of energy no one could remember seeing in their lifetimes, but that all would talk about with wonder until the day they died.” –  Melanie Benjamin, The Children’s Blizzard

“The hollowness was in his arms and the world was snowing.” – William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“We see something fresh and pure–when the snow falls, we can’t help it. We rush for our boots and go tromping about until it’s brown and muddy.” – Allie Ray, Inheritance

“In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city.” – Truman Capote, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“The white noise from the old Walkman enveloped them both; like a blanket of new snow, it draped itself over them, shutting out all the curious looks. And the world under the blanket was – surprisingly, wonderfully – absolutely, quiet.” – Antonia Michaelis, The Storyteller

“Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved (More Beloved Quotes by Toni Morrison)

“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people’s legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.” –  Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.” – Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

“Winter walks up and down the town swinging his censer, but no smoke or sweetness comes from it, only the sour, metallic frankness of salt and snow.” – Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“The snow began to fall again, drifting against the windows, politely begging entrance and then falling with disappointment to the ground.” –  Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Disaster

“With luck, it might even snow for us.” – Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night, the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.” – Alice Hoffman, Here on Earth

“Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores of Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells.” —Mark Halprin, Winter’s Tale

“Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again.” – E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“He was a newcomer to the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination.” – Jack London, To Build a Fire

“Why, what’s the matter, / That you have such a February face, / So full of frost, / of storm and cloudiness?” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“Annie lives with her elderly parents in a remote cottage. She is used to being alone. Every day she walks by the lonely marsh to school. Only in winter, when the wind howls in the trees, is Annie ever afraid.” – Kevin Crossley-Holland, Storm

“But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful “up back” – almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour – the purest vintage of winter’s wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings – torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revalation and wonder.”- L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“He came back to the car, long legs lifting high in the snow, and there was snow in his hair and on his eyelashes and I remembered that I love him. It felt like something breaking with a little pain and spilling warm.” –  Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“The world outside the windows was a wonderland of white and ice and pale blue winter birds with wings that turned to frosted lilac when they flew.” – Stephanie Garber, The Ballad of Never After

“Winter hung in there, like an invalid refusing to die. Day after grey day the ice stayed hard; the world remained unfriendly and cold.” – Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants